The cajón consists of a parallelepipedal wooden box with a hole at the back. This instrument stands directly on the ground with the musician sitting on it. The cajón is provided with a snare system formed of one or more metal wires. These metal wires are fixed to upper and lower parts of the box, crossing the latter and pressing against the striking surface. This wire may be straight or in a more expensive cajón it may take the form of a spiral.
The drawback of the cajón is that it has a limited range of sounds owing to its parallelepipedal shape. Furthermore, whichever part is struck, the snare vibrates. The cajón is not very comfortable to use because the musician strikes at a low level, which may cause back pain.
The Boombakini is a wooden instrument of a particular shape. It consists of a bottomless box. This box is composed of four faces forming the outline, on which a top rests. The lateral end walls have a rectangular profile. The front and rear faces have a convex profile in their lower part whilst in their upper part they follow a line which is firstly rectilinear, then continued by a concave part, which is itself continued by a rectilinear or very slightly convex part. The box may thus be divided into three zones: a deep zone for producing bass sounds, continued by a shallower median part for producing middle register sounds, said median part itself being continued in such a way as to form a chamber which is slightly deeper than the median part for producing high pitched sounds. A soundhole is arranged in the front face of the box. Although the Boombakini has a wider range of tones than the cajón, it has the drawback of having no snare. The bass sounds are dry and not round like those of a bass drum. Likewise the slap sound located at the slender high part cannot compare with a snare drum.